


In This Town We'll Bury

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 07:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had gone into business after Allison’s mother was bitten by a rapid werewolf. Shortly after succumbing to the curse, she had hunted and killed seven high school seniors, tearing each of them into bite-sized pieces, before begging her family to kill her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In This Town We'll Bury

**IN THIS TOWN WE'LL BURY**  
TEEN WOLF  
Danny/Stiles; Scott/Allison; Scott/Stiles; Boyd/Erica  
 **WARNINGS** : Supernatural Detective Agency AU! Graphic depictions of murder, human corpses, and animal carcasses.

  
They had gone into business after Allison’s mother was bitten by a rapid werewolf. Shortly after succumbing to the curse, she had hunted and killed seven high school seniors, tearing each of them into bite-sized pieces, before begging her family to kill her.

As Sheriff, Stiles had been assigned to the murder cases. He had worked for a year in the dark before the Argents finally exposed him to the world of the supernatural, introducing him to silver bullets and wooden stakes and spells made up of Latin incantations, and he had sat in a whiskey-induced stupor for a few days, wondering how he could have been so blind to this alternate world.

He quit the force a week after he had found the unrecognizable body of Allison’s mom, unable to once again face the inconsequential issues of a sleepy Californian town.

Six months after that, in between odd jobs and sleepless nights on his father’s couch, he got the call from Allison. Her father had left on a quest for self-fulfillment, pressing a kiss to her forehead and asking her to be good, and Allison had told Stiles, her voice hushed and firm over the phone, that she had received a substantial amount of money from her mother’s trust.

“I want to help people,” she had said, her voice brimming with tears, and Stiles imagined her with the phone pressed against her cheek, her knuckles white and scarred.

He never asked her why she chose him, and she never asked him why he said yes.

***

They officially started the agency the day after Stiles had gotten stupidly drunk and accidentally revealed everything to – and then subsequently slept with – his best friend Scott, who had made him swear not to tell anybody. Stiles had introduced Scott to Allison and watched as every memory of Stiles’ soft exhalations against the side of Scott’s neck the night before – every sigh and mew of pleasure, every time Scott had moaned Stiles’ name, every time Stiles had pressed his tongue to Scott’s – was erased, Scott turning happy and awkward underneath Allison’s gaze.

Stiles had rented out the little office space next to the animal hospital that Scott worked at and made some very discreet postings online, advertising for any supernatural problems, but most of the calls they got concerned missing pets and cheating spouses. These are the cases that Allison gladly hands over to Stiles, who usually solves them quietly on the side, if only because most of their usual clientele are too dead to pay.

The other cases, the large, bizarre ones, are given to them from underground contacts and people from Allison’s past, whose grandfather used to be a hunter of some kind and still retains enough expertise to pass information to them through a network of shady individuals. Allison speaks little about these people and even less about her family.

Scott helps out every once in a while, staying up late between rounds to work out some ghost or witch or zombie problem and Stiles pays him in beer and Allison’s undivided attention, slyly making his way out the door with a roll of his eyes when Scott brushes an imaginary eyelash from Allison’s cheek.

***

They hire Lydia a few months into a string of bizarre pet suicides. She answers the ad they put in the paper – “WANTED: junior investigator/receptionist. Requirements: great phone skills, ability to make coffee, an open mind.” – and asks just what exactly her mind should be open to.

Stiles had been up for over thirty hours at that point, running on coffee and energy bars and really close to intravenously ingesting Red Bull, so he’s not graceful when he hands her the stack of pictures they keep in one of the locked filing cabinets, pictures that have been taken by them or the police or by the confused and mostly lonely morgue attendants that Stiles has no problem bribing with food and/or a few stolen gropes in one of the shadowed closets.

Allison makes a sound of protest, but Lydia takes each picture and shuffles through them slowly, raising one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, shuffling through the werewolves and the vampires, shuffling through the disembodied ghosts and the haggard-looking witches, seeming entirely unconvinced. She returns to the first photo and sits for a moment, quiet.

Stiles had noticed when she walked in that she was impeccably dressed, her hair in beautiful curls, and now she crosses one long leg over the other, her skirt inching up on her thighs, exposing pale, freckled skin and Stiles looks down and then back up to her face, where she gives him a withering glare. Stiles’ cheeks burn bright red.

“Oh, I see,” she says. “You’re like a detective agency that solves supernatural-related cases.”

“Um,” Stiles says, blinking a few times. His hands are still shaky from the thirty-two ounces of Sumatra he downed this morning at Starbucks and he sits there with his mouth gaping open, and he knows he looks like an absolute idiot. “Um,” he says again.

Allison places her own tired hand over his, cutting him off. “Yes,” she says. “Exactly.” She has a tiny spot of mud on her knuckle from last night’s stake out in the cemetery, but Stiles just stares at it, unable to think clearly. Her hand is warm on his, comforting, and he doesn’t let go.

Lydia shrugs. “My ex-boyfriend was a werewolf,” she says, and hands Stiles the pictures. “After he got bit, he ran off to London before I could tell him how much of a cliché that was. Actually, he probably would have hated me working here.”

There’s a small patch of sunlight that filters through the shades, lighting her hair on fire. “Oh, yeah, and I’m a bit psychic.”

She smiles. “When can I start?”

***

Lydia gets the first call a few weeks after Allison’s father sends Allison a postcard from Nepal, his handwriting betraying nothing, his words meaningless. Allison’s holding it by the fridge, tapping it against the counter absentmindedly as she waits for the coffee to brew. Stiles slides a hand over her shoulder as he passes her on his way to Lydia, and she gives him the barest hint of a smile.

There had been a few unrelated, but ultimately puzzling deaths around Beacon Hills and the police had been working overtime, but finding nothing substantial. Stiles picks up the reluctant phone call from Sheriff Boyd, Stiles’ voice so cheery, it’s almost distasteful.

“Sheriff!” Stiles says loud enough that Lydia’s nail file slips from her fingers and clatters to the floor. Lydia glares at him and picks it up just as Stiles leans back in his chair, propping his dirty boots on Allison’s pristine desk. He had been out all night chasing a banshee on the edge of town near one of the small, manmade lakes, and he had yet to go home and change his clothes, let alone take a shower or a nap. Lydia had been making pointed comments about his smell all morning. “What can I do for you?”

Boyd sighs heavily over the phone. “I was wondering if you and Allison could stop by later today so that I could discuss a case with you,” he says. He sounds unenthusiastic, but even more than that, he sounds tired.

Stiles slips his feet off the desk. “Sure,” he says. “And I’m guessing this is about those kids up in the woods?”

What the news described as a bear attack, but what Stiles suspects to be something a little more unearthly, four teenagers viciously mauled to death and left to rot in the forest, far enough away and well enough hidden that they weren’t found for a couple of weeks. Stiles remembered those days – the quiet, determined ones where he would stare at the pictures of the deceased smiling and happy and tacked up on his evidence board and pretend that if he worked hard enough he could find some justice in the world – and he doesn’t envy Boyd at all.

“And a few others, yes,” Boyd says. “I think some of the cases that we’ve been attributing to animal attacks are not animal attacks.” He pauses and Stiles knows that he’s gritting his teeth. “I’ve heard that since you’ve left the force, you’ve become kind of an expert on weird cases.”

“You could say that,” Stiles says, making a face and rolling his eyes. Allison raises an eyebrow at him from the kitchen and he shakes his head. “I’m not sure that this case warrants our expertise, though.”

Across from him, Lydia gives him a questioning look, rubbing the thumb and fingers of one hand back and forth to suggest that she would like to receive her paycheck on time this week.

“It does, I promise,” Boyd says. And then, “Plus, I’m sure that Deputy Mahealani would love to see you again,” and his voice is deadpan, but Stiles knows that he’s smiling cruelly on the other end of the line.

Stiles coughs and then says, “Alright. We’ll be there a couple of hours.”

***

A few years ago, Danny had given Stiles an ultimatum: stop drinking or move out.

By then, three years after becoming Sheriff, Stiles had worked at least twenty-six cases where he felt the need to drink until he couldn’t remember the faces and names and birth dates anymore, climbing off the bar stool and driving home drunk only to pour himself into bed, slipping his nose into the place where Danny’s shoulder met his neck, losing himself in the warmth, kissing until his mouth was numb, unwinding quietly beneath Danny’s hands.

Danny had just graduated from the academy, and was actively trying to convince everyone in law enforcement that he was not sleeping his way to the top, so when he sat up one night waiting for Stiles to come home, his eyes scrubbed raw and red, it was easy for Stiles to trick himself into believing that it was Danny’s fault, to choose the alcohol over any semblance of a normal relationship. He drank and then he drank some more, renting cheap motel rooms and sleeping occasionally at the office, his eyes looking more and more bruised every day. He fucked women and men he met after dark and left before he could fall asleep, embarrassed about the nightmares he would wake up from in the early morning hours, sweating and panting and screaming out.

He worked cases that he solved and cases that he couldn’t solve and cases that fell into the realm of something he couldn’t name at the time, cases where boys and girls from the local high school were bitten once every full moon and left to die out in the open, their palms uncovered and outstretched, their lips pale and bloodless.

Shortly after that, he met Allison.

Shortly after that, his whole world disappeared.

***

Danny smiles warmly at him when they walk into the station. Allison is one step behind him, her hand on his back, and Stiles doesn’t know if it’s for her – because, he remembers, she hasn’t been inside the police station since the night her mother was killed – or for him.

Stiles smiles back and places both hands on the counter in between them, watching Danny watch him. “Hi,” Stiles says, and understands at once that he feels genuine in this moment, that he’s let go of all of his misplaced anger. “It’s been a while.”

“It has,” Danny says, and places a light hand over his. “You look good.” Much better than the last time he saw him, Danny doesn’t say. “I’m glad the Sheriff managed to convince you to come in. We’re definitely overdue for a talk.”

“Years overdue,” Stiles agrees, and then regrets it. It’s (mostly) his own fault that they haven’t talked since that night, but he finds it hard to admit it in the cold light of the station, so he turns to Allison before he can say something else stupid. “This is my partner Allison.”

Danny smiles brilliantly, shaking her offered hand, and turns back to Stiles. “If you guys want to follow me, we can head down to the Sheriff’s office.” He lets them through the partition. “Although I’m sure you remember the way, Stiles.”

Stiles only nods, brushing past Danny and feeling the warmth of Danny’s hand on his back.

Boyd has left most of the office untouched since Stiles left, the same stark interior filled with dark furniture and stacks of case files and square, hard-backed chairs that Allison and Stiles sit in once Boyd shakes their hands. There is an open file on the desk and Stiles tilts his head to read the words, but Boyd shuts it before he can make out anything other than “Caucasian male” and “bite marks.”

Danny closes the door and stands beside Stiles’ chair, and Stiles can smell a hint of the Armani aftershave that he had bought Danny once for Christmas. He wants to say something about it, something appreciative, something that covers both his feelings of regret and reconciliation, but Boyd interrupts.

“Thanks for coming,” he says, even though his voice completely betrays his gratitude.

Stiles smiles at Boyd, always pleasant in the face of utter disdain, and says, “No problem, Sheriff. We’re always happy to help.”

Boyd grimaces and Stiles notices the shiny gold ring against his dark skin and wonders when and how he had missed Erica and Boyd’s wedding. He looks over at Allison, but she doesn’t even acknowledge him.

“You said that this was about the campers?” Allison asks, her hands folded perfectly in her lap. Stiles can tell that she’s uncomfortable, on edge, and he guesses that it’s the police station, the authority standing before her, that has her uneasy. Her father had taught her this, a longstanding Argent tradition of being reckless and uncommunicative and exclusive, and – more than once, when her mother was on the run – she had clashed with Stiles and his fumbling investigation, thwarting his deputies and undermining what little influence he held.

He readily admits to anyone who asks that that’s one of the reasons why he was originally drawn to her.

“Yes,” Boyd says and asks Danny to pass him the stack of folders on the filing cabinet behind Stiles and Allison. He lays out the pictures of the teenagers’ bodies in front of them, black and red against the stark white papers full of names and dates and diagrams.

“Two males, two females, all under eighteen,” Boyd hands Stiles and Allison two Xeroxed copies of what look like dentures. “At first we suspected a bear attack, but animal control says we don’t get many bears up here around this time of year. We took plasters of the bite marks and, well, you can see why we found it a little strange.”

Stiles stares at the black and white photo. “These are human teeth,” he says.

Boyd nods, his mouth a long, straight line. “But there are claw marks on each torso. We thought maybe he brought a dog, but the animal guys say no. The claws are too wide, too far apart.”

Stiles looks at Allison, who frowns at the photos, puzzled. They’re both thinking the same thing: this is not a werewolf kill.

Danny moves to press his palms flat against the desk, pointing to another photo, this one depicting the underbrush around the bodies, bloodied and green. “We also found some footprints; heavy indentations mark him for somewhere around two-hundred pounds. Size eleven shoes.”

“Only one man?” Allison asks, and Boyd nods.

“No other shoe impressions, no tire treads, just one man up in the woods on foot.” Boyd bites his lip in thought. “And – before you ask – there were no signs of sexual assault, either pre- or post-mortem.”

“It doesn’t rule out sexual excitation for the motive, though,” Danny says, and Stiles looks up at him, inquisitively. Danny shrugs, his smile deepening his dimples. “Took a couple of classes at Quantico last year.”

Stiles feels the overwhelming surge of pride in the pit of his stomach and looks down at the photos again before a grin can overtake his face. “Did he,” and here Stiles pauses, making a face. “Eat anything?”

“Some fatty tissue was missing from all of the bodies,” Boyd says, shuffling the papers to find the report. “But only one of the victims had organs removed. Here: the youngest boy, Cameron. Liver, heart, and kidneys were taken out, post-mortem. They were crude wounds, so we doubt this guy has any surgical skills.”

Allison breathes in once and then again, her fingers trembling on one of the gruesome pictures, and Stiles wants to place his hand on hers, but doesn’t.

“I called you guys because I’ve heard that you have a monopoly on the weird in this town,” Boyd says. “I know we’ve had our differences,” and here Stiles wants to laugh because that’s the understatement of the year, “but I would appreciate it if we could work together on this one. I mean, short of calling in the FBI, I’m not really sure what to do here.”

Danny places a warm, steady palm on Stiles’ shoulder. “It’ll be like old times,” he says, smiling wide, and Stiles isn’t sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

***

Stiles asks Allison to meet him by the car, following Danny’s smile into the station’s little kitchenette, the smell of bad coffee drawing memories from deep inside of him. Danny offers him a scalding Styrofoam cup and Stiles only takes it so he will have something to do with his hands, standing with his hip against the counter and cataloguing Danny’s back as he stirs cream into his own cup, Danny’s tight uniform and the way his belt hugs his hips, and Stiles swallows once and then again and takes a full sip of his coffee and burns his entire mouth.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, and Danny turns back around and Stiles knows that his face is red, can tell from the heat of his cheeks, but Danny just smiles again.

“We’ve missed you here,” Danny says, and Stiles wishes Danny had said I’ve missed you here instead, and he downs another volcanic sip to stop himself from saying something really stupid like I’ve missed being here, because – no matter how much he has missed Danny, no matter how much he has missed the comfortable, clinical processes of the work – he never once missed the claustrophobic feeling of the police station. “You were one of the best Sheriffs Beacon Hills has ever had, Stiles.”

“I don’t know about that,” Stiles says, suddenly shy, but Danny shakes his head.

“It’s true,” he says. “I mean, we all love Vernon, but he doesn’t have the same charm. If you hadn’t noticed, he’s kind of a hard-ass.”

Stiles wants to say, “Really?” rolling his eyes for effect, but Danny moves closer, his hand covering Stiles’ hand on the counter, taking the cup out of Stiles’ grasp and placing it out of reach.

“You look really good,” Danny says, and Stiles looks up, his mouth so close to Danny’s mouth.

“You said that already,” he says, and Danny licks his lips, his breath whispering across Stiles’ face.

“Did I?” Danny says, and leans down to kiss Stiles. Stiles makes an embarrassing sound and pushes against him, pulling him close, faster, harder, and Danny’s hands are gripping his sides so tightly that Stiles can feel his ribs move together, and they’re moving against each other, fighting for space, until Danny finally pulls back, his breath hard between them, panting.

Stiles doesn’t know what to say, his mind completely and utterly in shock, but Danny doesn’t let him say anything, anyway, just leads him by the hand through the deserted station, past Boyd’s closed door, until they find the abandoned storage closet that Stiles used to use as a liquor cabinet back in the days that he pretty much lived on the couch in his office. Danny pushes him inside and closes the door and they’re thrust into darkness and Stiles can hear the click of the lock, can feel Danny slide smooth against him, and they fuck right there, Danny’s mouth against the back of Stiles’ neck, his palm hot where it slides over his spine.

Later, when Danny programs his number into Stiles’ phone when they’re both half naked, Danny’s uniform hanging open and Stiles’ shirt utterly wrecked, Stiles kisses him once and then again and then can’t stop kissing him, until Danny’s radio buzzes with Boyd’s quizzical voice, asking him where the fuck he is, and Danny has to push Stiles away gently and tell him to call him later, tell him that he would love to see him again, to see if this is a thing that they can try again. Stiles nods dumbly, his mouth stretched out like maybe he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he takes Danny’s hand before he goes and holds it for one minute, two, until Danny shakes him off and kisses him one last time, telling him that he looks good – for the third time.

Later, Stiles walks out and doesn’t look at Allison’s raised eyebrow as he gets in the passenger seat of his Jeep, rolling down the window and turning the radio loud as a way of (1) not answering the obvious questions she has written down on the imaginary bulleted list in her brain, like what is he doing with his shirt wrinkled and his palms sweaty and his hair messed up as though someone had been pawing at it, and (2) letting her work out the nerves she had been building ever since she stepped foot into the station, her knuckles white on the Jeep’s steering wheel, her military-grade boot heavy on the pedal.

***

When they get back, Lydia is sitting with Scott, pushing around a plate of fries, and Scott looks up at both of them, but narrows his eyes at the way Allison holds herself, and he takes her by the wrist and leads her into the small-ish bathroom, the only place where he can kiss her on the mouth and ask her what’s wrong and she will answer truthfully, out of the way of prying eyes, leaning her head on his shoulder, placing her nose against his throat, breathing out to steady the tears.

Stiles sits at his desk and Lydia gets this look on her face like he has just sprouted fangs and claws and pointed ears and extra body hair, rippling across his cheeks and the backs of his knuckles. He drops one of the folders that Danny had slipped into his hands in Boyd’s office when nobody was looking, badly Xeroxed copies of copies of copies detailing the investigation, and says, “What?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Please tell me that you did not have sex with Danny.”

“Lydia,” Stiles growls. “What have I told you?”

“It’s not a faucet, Stiles, I can’t turn it off,” she says, sweetly, her smile dripping with venom. She means the slightly psychic ability that she gets sometimes, the feelings that led her here in the first place, the feelings that almost, but not quite, got her the job. “Plus, you smell like his aftershave, so it really wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“Yeah, well, your psychic powers are shit if they can only tell you who people have sex with,” Stiles says, and Lydia throws a very sharp pencil at him.

Allison and Scott emerge from the bathroom, looking a little less put together, the neckline of Scott’s shirt marred with Allison’s lip gloss. “Scott’s going to help us stake out the woods tonight,” Allison says, and she sits down to unlace her boots, pulling them off. “But you should probably go home and sleep before we head out,” she says to Stiles, who is currently opening his seventh can of Red Bull.

“No, I’m good,” Stiles says, and makes a face.

“No, you’re not,” Allison says, and Scott agrees, placing a warm palm on the back of Stiles’ neck.

Lydia picks up her nail file again. “Plus, he’s probably tired from all that sex he’s having with Danny.” She grins cruelly at him, Stiles’ cheeks burning in shame.

Scott’s grip tightens and Stiles doesn’t want to turn around for a minute, but ultimately does, steeling himself for the disapproving mom face that Scott pulls on him sometimes. He’s surprised to see Scott’s smile, relieved even, his heartbeat leveling in his chest.

“Are you and Danny back together?” Scott asks, and his face is hopeful enough that Stiles regrets every mean thing that he has ever said about him, including, but not limited to, the way he had criticized Scott’s drunken fumbling the night before they started the agency, Scott’s sloppy kisses and the way he had slurred his words against Stiles’ mouth.

Stiles blinks a few times, unsure of what to say, and Scott’s fingers dance, tickling the nape of his neck. “Not really,” he says.

“I mean, maybe,” he says.

He shrugs. “I don’t know?” It sounds more like a question than anything else.

Scott’s mouth quirks. “Keep me posted,” he says, and his hand leaves a spider bite of warmth crawling down Stiles’ back when Scott pulls it away.

***

After Stiles wakes up sullen and cranky from a (too short) four-hour nap, he meets Allison and Scott and Lydia in the forest, his heavy boots crunching the leaves loudly as he makes his way toward the brutalized campsite. There is no blood left, not after a few weeks, but there are still indentations in the dirt, and if Stiles was careful, he could probably map out where the bodies were dragged to die from sight alone.

Allison kneels down by some of the unblemished tracks, but shakes her head when Scott asks her if she’s found anything. “Too many people have been through here,” she says, frowning. “If this was fresh, I could pick up his trail, but,” she shrugs.

Lydia shivers, even though the temperature is far from cold, the warm breeze shooting through the trees and enveloping them, ruffling Stiles’ jacket. Stiles moves over to her, but she waves him off, closing her eyes, placing a hand over her face. She’s said many times before that darkness helps, helps her see things more clearly, helps her picture the scene, and he had asked her once what it felt like and she had said that it felt like someone shoving a molten ice pick made of light and sound through the top of her skull, piercing her brain with slow-moving images and feelings and thoughts.

Lydia’s mouth turns down, and Stiles’ hands hover over her, afraid that she might cry, and when she looks at him, her eyes are shining, swollen, but she doesn’t make a sound. He asks her, what, and she just says that she felt them, over and over again, their screams and cries and calls out to their parents, shaky and weak and weeping in the dark. She clears her throat and takes Stiles’ palm in hers for a moment, gathering strength, before moving away, her body poised.

“You didn’t say that he ate one of them,” she says, and if Stiles wasn’t listening for it, he never would have heard her voice quiver.

Allison stands up. “We didn’t want to tell you too much,” she says, and Lydia looks at her sharply.

“You wanted it to be a surprise?” Her voice is almost pained. “Still testing my abilities?”

“No,” Allison says, and then again, “No.”

“I asked her to keep it from you,” Stiles says. “I didn’t think you should know.” His voice is firm, his old authoritative Sheriff voice coming back like it was ever natural to him.

Lydia narrows her eyes and Stiles can feel the anger beneath her skin, radiating, and he takes a step back. “Because you don’t think I could handle this? I’m not a child, Stiles. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can,” Stiles says, but she’s already dismissed him, turning away. “Lydia,” he says, reaching out his hand, but something cuts him off, something loud and sharp near him, not the cry of a werewolf, not even close, but something just as chilling.

Scott whispers, “What the fuck?” and Allison covers his mouth with her hand, physically shushing him.

“Lydia, get down,” Stiles whispers, moving his hand to his gun belt, feeling for the holster, and almost crying out loud when he feels that it’s empty, his gun lying somewhere between his apartment and the car, the silver bullets still left in the case. Lydia crouches low in between him and Allison, and Allison pushes Scott toward her, turning her back on them to scan the woods. Stiles does the same, trying to search for something – anything – in the diminished light.

There’s the sound again – something between a howl and a scream, inhuman and unsettling – and Stiles’ empty hands are opening and closing in the dark. “Stiles,” Allison says behind him, low, and he turns just in time to catch a glimpse of something moving in the shadows, something really fucking fast.

“I see it,” he says, and Lydia makes a noise somewhere close to the ground, her hand moving to her head, and Scott puts an arm around her shoulder. Stiles sees the thing again, tracks the tall – really, really tall – shape moving past Allison and toward his side of their little semi-circle, then loses it in the dark of the trees. “It’s gone,” he says, and Allison makes a noise of frustration.

“We need to get out of here,” she says. “Now.”

They hear branches around them crackling under the weight of the thing, they hear the brush of leaves, and Stiles nods, but doesn’t see any good options. “We’re going to have to make a run for it,” he says, his voice hushed in the small space between them. “Allison, you’re in front, then Lydia, then Scott, then me. We’re going to need to go now.”

Allison nods without another a word and grabs Lydia’s hand, takes off running the way they came in, Scott stumbling behind them, his fingers gripping tight to his inhaler, the canister hissing when he accidentally presses it. Stiles lets the gap widen a little, hears the whispers of the trees around him, and then runs, his heart racing inside of him, his legs pounding the ground, and he stumbles once, when he overshoots a step and gets caught on a protruding root, but then he’s back on his feet and running, running, running, catching a few glimpses in the dark of Scott’s bright shirt, of Allison’s shiny boots, of Lydia’s patterned skirt.

When he gets back to the Jeep, they’re all there, huddled inside, waiting for him, and he barely has the door open, his hand on the inside handle, sliding in, before Allison starts the engine, peeling out of the dirt trail and back onto the main road, the tires squealing on the pavement.

***

Allison pulls out a large, leather-bound book from one of the locked drawers of her desk, opening it to reveal yellowed, brittle pages. Scott is sitting beside her and Stiles is pacing the space between her desk and Lydia’s, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum, and Lydia keeps glancing at him and then back to her mug of coffee, unsure of what to say.

“I thought I would check creatures associated with forests or woodlands,” Allison says, thumbing through the book, passing the dully colored renderings of ancient creatures, the sirens and wraiths and skin-walkers, “But all I could find were pages on nymphs and Bigfoot.”

“Well, I wouldn’t rule out Bigfoot,” Stiles says, and Allison raises both of her eyebrows at him. “Did you see that thing? It was huge!”

Scott pauses, his inhaler halfway to his mouth. “Bigfoot doesn’t really exist, does he?”

Allison says, “No,” at the same time that Stiles shrugs and says, “Maybe.” She gives Stiles another look.

Lydia is uncharacteristically quiet, but she had already reassured Allison five times in the space between the car and the office that she was fine, biting her words out angrily, so nobody asks her again, even though Scott abandons Allison’s search through the dusty pages to sit beside her, sliding his arm around her shoulders. She smiles tightly at him, her hands enveloping the warm mug.

“So what do we have? Tall, shadowy figure with claws that likes to eat people?” Stiles asks, more to himself than anyone else. “That’s some solid evidence right there.”

Allison sighs, turning page after page. “Maybe it is a werewolf,” she says. “And we’re just looking at this the wrong way. I mean, werewolves are that fast, they,” one shy glance toward Lydia, remembering her ex-boyfriend, “sometimes eat humans. They’re strong enough to kill four people at once, they have claws.”

“Werewolf with a root canal?” Stiles asks, shaking his head. “It has human teeth, and last time I checked, werewolves have very distinctive fangs.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “No, this feels different. It doesn’t feel like a werewolf kill.”

Allison taps a pen against her mouth, inquisitively, and asks, “Then what is it?”

No one answers her. 

***  


Stiles wakes up sometime in the early morning hours, his phone buzzing beside him, and he reaches blindly for it, knocking a glass of water off the side table and onto the floor. “Shit,” he mumbles and answers his phone, squinting at the touchscreen.

“Hey,” Danny’s gentle voice greets him, and Stiles’ heart stills.

“Hey,” he says, and he can feel the warmth stirring in the pit of his belly, can remember the feel of Danny’s mouth against his yesterday afternoon.

“I wanted to give you a call before the Sheriff could,” Danny says. “We’ve had another murder, this one out by the maintenance road near the old Hale place. I thought you might want to check out the scene once we’re done trampling it.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, and doesn’t know whether to feel excited about the possibility of new evidence or ashamed that he feels excited. “Okay, I’ll call Allison and we’ll get down there as soon as possible.” He rubs a hand across his tired eyes, catching the red numbers of the clock and mentally calculating the (very small) amount of sleep he got last night.

“And I also wanted to thank you for yesterday,” Danny says, and then his voice turns sheepish. “Even though it was wildly inappropriate and could have cost me my job.”

“I would have taken the blame,” Stiles says, and he knows Danny can hear the smile in his voice. “I mean, honestly, you just couldn’t resist my body.”

Danny laughs, and, fuck, but Stiles has missed this. “Right, Stiles,” he says, unfazed, and then, “Call me later and we’ll get dinner, okay?”

Stiles grins at his ceiling. “Okay,” he says.

***

The Hale house is ravaged, from the fire that started it and the years of abandonment, from bad storms and neighborhood rituals, where the kids would dare themselves to sleep inside on the broken floorboards, jumping at every creak and groan of the wood, inevitably running outside well before midnight, shrieking about the Hale family ghosts. Stiles meets Allison here, and shows her the photographs that Danny had given him, shows her where the massacred bodies had been, shows her the deep, dark shuffling treads in the dirt.

Allison looks warily at the house and then back down to the indentations in the ground, the dried pools of blood. A couple this time: two men, mid-twenties, average height and build, and Danny had said that they had gone out for a walk in the woods, staying close to the maintenance road, when one of them was grabbed from behind and led to the house. They were both eaten this time, same organs missing, dead within minutes.

Allison crouches down to study the tracks while Stiles walks around the perimeter of the house. There’s most of the first floor still standing, charred and black from the dark soot that coats everything, but almost nothing of the second, the roof open under the sky. None of the windows have a full pane of glass, having been kicked out by either vandals or falling tree branches or both, and there were some tags in bright blue spray paint on one of the walls, a half-written name that ended in dark, dripping paint, like the writer had been scared off by someone – or something.

There used to be a garden, but now the shrubs and rose bushes were growing wildly out of control, tangled and suffocating the little dirt walkway that led up to the house. There was no paved driveway, no cement sidewalk that Stiles could see and he knew that they were almost a mile from the road, so any person that would have lived here before it became the haunted house that it is now would have valued their privacy.

He gets to the back, where the porch is falling in on itself, lush green vines wrapped around and around the railing, when he sees something out of the corner of his eye. He reaches for his holster, this time thoroughly prepared, but the shape moves into the clearing and Stiles immediately recognizes the form. He breathes out one long exhale, leaning heavily up against a nearby tree, one palm over his heart.

“Jesus! You almost gave me a fucking heart attack, Derek,” he says, and Derek moves closer.

“Did you forget that this was still private property, Stilinski?” Derek asks, and his words are harsh between them, his mouth sharp. “I already had the entire Sheriff’s department here; I don’t need you, too.”

Allison comes around the side and walks over to them, standing tall beside Stiles, her knife in her hands. She’s not threatening Derek with it, but she might as well be, the tension in the air thick enough to choke.

“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Stiles says, and he holds both of his hands up, his palms to Derek. “But this is still a crime scene, and we’re just working a case. I’m sure Boyd has already told you about it.”

“He did,” Derek says, but he’s still uneasy, his eyes watching Allison watch him.

“And you didn’t see anything?” Stiles asks. He takes one step closer, but Derek lets out something like a growl, so Stiles moves back again.

“No,” Derek says, and his hands are shaped into fists. “I didn’t.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and then again, “Okay.”

Derek doesn’t say anything else, and Stiles smiles a tight smile, says, “Let us know if you find anything the police missed.”

He grips Allison’s wrist with two fingers and leads her back around the house, Derek watching them walk away. They pass the dirt patch where the bodies had lain – before, of course, an unsuspecting tourist on a morning jog through the woods had come across first the eerie and gutted house and then the two men, stumbling over their splayed and bloody arms – and keep on moving until they reach the car, safely out of ear shot, even with Derek’s keen werewolf senses.

“He’s lying,” Allison says when they pull out onto the road again, her hands tight on the steering wheel, her knife still strapped to her thigh, within reach.

“I know,” Stiles says, and Allison looks at him sharply and then back to the road and then back to him again.

“If you knew, then why did we leave? We could have at least asked him a few questions, Stiles.” The car jerks with her angry turn of the wheel.

“Even if he knows what the thing was that killed those people, he’s not going to tell us, Allison, and you know it.” Stiles sighs and pulls out his phone, checking his messages. “I mean, we’re not exactly his favorite people.”

Allison makes a frustrated sound, but doesn’t push it, turning down the road to the office and parking in Stiles’ usual spot. She turns off the engine and sits there, her hands on the wheel, her eyes forward, not moving, barely breathing, even when Stiles opens the door to the car and walks inside the building.

He doesn’t ask her what’s wrong, because he knows what’s wrong, knows that seeing Derek Hale – a longtime enemy of the Argents and Stiles’ first and only official suspect for the seven murders that Allison’s mom committed – has brought her back to the time when her mom was alive. Her father had fought for the Code and then against it when Allison’s mother was revealed as (first) a werewolf and (then) a killer, and Allison was caught somewhere in the middle, wanting to see her mother stop killing and knowing that the only way to do it was to stop her herself, was to kill her.

Her father had let her do it, and Allison had carried the scars for years, for forever.

Stiles watches Allison from the window, watches her fold her arms over the wheel, her hands underneath her elbows, her shoulders heaving with long, shuttered breaths, watches as she begins to cry.

***

Danny meets him in town for dinner.

They talk about Danny’s career and they talk about Stiles’ father, who Stiles has always joked loved Danny more than his own son, and they talk about the brief stint in juvie that Danny served after hacking into a government database – “Oh, I knew about that,” Stiles says, smiling wide. “Those records were sealed,” Danny says, raising both of his eyebrows, and Stiles bites his lip, rubs a hand across the back of his neck, suddenly shy. “Not for me they weren’t.” – and they talk about how Stiles met Allison, or at least as much of the abridged version that Stiles can share.

They don’t talk about the case, or the autopsy results, which Danny had brought to dinner in a plain brown case folder, handing it to Stiles when they met in the parking lot. They don’t talk about supernatural creatures or anything else that goes bump in the night, which Stiles is only too willing to push aside for just a few hours. They don’t talk about them, or the thing that they might or might not be starting again, even though Danny’s friends had warned him that it was all a big mistake, even though Stiles himself had kind of freaked out after they had sex at the police station, wondering if they should just be casual, wondering if they could just say fuck it and actually make this work.

When they finish, Danny asks him back to his place, which is nice and beautifully furnished and devoid of empty pizza boxes and Chinese takeout containers, two of the main staples in Stiles’ apartment. Stiles looks around, always the nosy cop, even now, and Danny grabs a few beers out of the fridge, and they sit for a moment on the couch, not talking, before Danny says, “This is stupid,” and sets his beer on the coffee table before taking Stiles’ from his hands and setting that down, as well. He places his palm on Stiles’ cheek and brings him close, his mouth hovering over Stiles’ mouth for one breathless moment before he kisses him, Danny’s mouth tasting like spaghetti and pesto sauce and expensive, imported wine.

It’s slower this time, slower than the other day, and Danny leads Stiles to his bedroom and lays him down and kisses him and kisses him and keeps kissing him, his hands deftly unbuttoning Stiles’ shirt without even a glance. Stiles makes an embarrassing sound and Danny laughs, gently, sweetly, and Stiles pushes up to kiss him again, if only to occupy his mouth, and Danny’s hands encircle Stiles’ waist before moving to the top button and zipper of his jeans, pulling them off, his mouth moving down Stiles’ neck and down to his chest and down even further and Stiles places a hot, sweaty hand in Danny’s hair, gripping tight enough that Danny bites him playfully on the hip.

“Fuck,” Stiles says when Danny’s mouth moves lower, and Danny presses a soft kiss to Stiles’ thigh, and Stiles closes his eyes and wonders why he ever thought he could live without this.

***

He invites Danny to the office, sans uniform, so Danny would have no trouble divulging pertinent information that Stiles and Allison have been unaware of, Boyd’s grip on the case having tightened after a call from one of the deputies who had seen them snooping around the old Hale house. He sits next to Stiles, and Lydia gets that look on her face again, the one where she knows that Stiles knows that she knows about what happened just a few hours before, and Stiles shoots her a glare, but she’s too busy fawning over Danny to catch it, leaning in close with her hand on his shoulder, smiling sweetly and telling him that he could do so much better.

Scott had given him a thumbs-up when they had first walked in together, but Stiles had pointedly ignored him, half-jokingly asking him if he had vet-related things that he could be doing because this was an investigators-only meeting. Scott had rolled his eyes and sat down next to Allison, where he stayed the rest of the night, occasionally looking vaguely green at some of the more gruesome details, even after Stiles teased him mercilessly for having a weak stomach.

Danny tells him that they’ve fully investigated Derek Hale (at Boyd’s request, after learning that Derek was a suspect in Allison’s mom’s case back when Stiles was in charge, a case that remains eerily similar to this one, Danny’s words, not Stiles’) and found nothing amiss. Allison doesn’t say anything about that, but she does give Stiles a look, and he nods, letting her know that they will check him out separately, after Danny goes home, because the agency’s methods – and consequently the agency’s results – have always been a little different than the police’s.

“With six kills, Vernon’s officially thinking about bringing in the FBI,” Danny says, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Those pencil-pushers won’t do anything that you aren’t already doing,” Stiles says. “They’re going to hope for a break when the next murder happens, and maybe they’ll get lucky, but it’ll be because you set up a road block or because someone phones in an anonymous tip. It’s detective work, not magic.”

Lydia raises one perfectly arched eyebrow at him, and Stiles thinks, Well, a little bit of magic sometimes.

(Stiles’ hatred for the FBI has gone back to the thirty-five rejected applications for a position in most of the California field offices, even after his dad had told him that the FBI was not as glamorous as it looked on TV, especially when compared to being a Beacon Hills Sheriff. Stiles had given him a look that was somewhere between “Really?” and “No, really?” but his dad had only shrugged, looking over to his golden retirement plaque, his eyes misting.)

Danny shakes his head, smiling, and then says, “Either way, if you guys don’t start giving him something useful, he’ll officially rescind his offer for help.”

“We’re still working out some theories,” Allison says. Nothing that you would ever understand, she doesn’t say. “But we should have something for you by tomorrow.”

Stiles gives her a questioning look – we will? – but she only looks confident.

“Great,” Danny says, and he kisses Stiles once more before he leaves, after taking him by the wrist to the parking lot, where he cups Stiles’ face with both hands, his thumbs warm on Stiles’ cheeks. Stiles can see Lydia and Scott peeking out of the office window, the blinds swaying back and forth with their movements, their noses pressed to the glass, but he doesn’t look away from Danny, who tells him that he’s glad they found each other again.

Stiles says, “Me, too,” smiling and smiling, meaning that and so much more, pressing his mouth to Danny’s again, unable to let him go without one last touch.

***

Allison and Stiles go back to the Hale house, even though they have been warned against it by both the authorities and Derek, who has so far declined to answer any of Stiles’ repeated phone calls. There’s still a trail there, which Allison had picked up earlier but was unable to see where it led, and they follow it now in silence, the bobbing of their flashlights and their shuffling steps stilling the sounds of sleepless crickets and birds. The trail weaves in and out of the trees, wide shoe impressions and uneven steps and blood coating the dirt, even as far as a mile out, where the trees grow closer together and the grass gets taller and taller.

Stiles catches a dark cavernous mass with his flashlight, an unending void, and startles, thinking that the thing has followed them here, but it’s only a cave, the walls slick and hungry. He calls out to Allison, who is following the trail in a different direction, still finding bits of broken branches and fallen leaves. She comes over and points her flashlight in the same direction as Stiles, but there’s still nothing, just black.

“Not a good idea,” she says, and Stiles wiggles his eyebrows.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes.

“Not in there, that’s for sure. Especially not at night.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Stiles asks, and Allison gives him a withering look. “C’mon,” he says, whining, and she closes her eyes for a minute, exhaling loudly through her nose, before finally agreeing.

There’s nothing inside except for the widening walls and the latent echo of dripping water somewhere, either from the ceiling or the walls, where both stalactites and stalagmites protrude, gathered together in groups of three or four, making it difficult to walk without ducking and/or sidestepping. Stiles bounces his flashlight from wall to floor to wall again, but there isn’t much difference between them, and there’s absolutely nothing to be seen ahead, just one long darkened space.

Moving through, the walls widen even further, enough that Stiles and Allison can walk side by side comfortably, and they keep walking, even though Allison suggests every few minutes that they should turn back, especially considering that the trail didn’t even lead here, even though Stiles had grown bored five minutes ago, his curiosity sufficiently killed, and he’s just about to give in to Allison’s demands when they smell it. It comes fast, the thick, pungent odor of something inhuman, something with fur and possibly claws, something most probably dead, and Allison shuts off her flashlight instinctively, whispering furiously to Stiles to do the same, and then they’re plunged into darkness, Allison’s hands finding Stiles’ sweaty palm in silence.

She leads him back against the wall, flattened against the coarse surface, and they stand there for one minute, two, their hearts beating rapidly in their chests, their breathing uneven, but there’s no other sound, nothing except for the drip drip drip of something far away and the faint breeze whistling past them. The smell is still there, and Allison waits another second, steeling herself, gathering her courage before clicking on the light and aiming it for the space in front of them.

There, right before them, is a hulking mass, unmoving. Stiles unsnaps his holster and raises his gun, pointing his flashlight in the same direction, and moves slowly with Allison, off the wall and closer, the light shaking slightly. They can’t make out the shape first, can’t figure out if it’s an animal or if it’s something more dangerous, the thing they’ve been hunting, but then they get close enough that Allison nudges it with the toe of her boot, pushes it over to reveal the hollowed out expanse of what could only be a bear, the dead-eyed face and slack snout, the bare ribs shining and white in the light.

“Shit,” Stiles says, breathing heavily, and Allison crouches low, inspects the wound. She’s been studying animal anatomy on and off with Scott, who is only too eager to help, excitedly bringing her into the hospital to introduce her to the different types of diseases in dogs and cats and other domestic animals. When Stiles had asked about it, she had told him that it was strictly professional, if only because it was the closest thing that they were ever going to get to some of the creatures they came across, who were decidedly more similar to animals than humans.

She moves the bear around with the end of her crossbow, checking for other signs of damage. There’s not much left of the carcass, but what is left has long ago succumbed to several insect infestations, the fur matted, the bones picked clean.

“This is pretty old,” she says. “Way before the killings started.”

“Do you think it was done by,” Stiles pauses, “Whatever the thing is?”

“Probably,” Allison says. She touches the carcass again with her bow before standing up. “It was definitely not killed by humans, and there aren’t many animals around here that could kill a bear this size.”

“So, what? This thing graduates from killing bears to killing humans?” Stiles shines his flashlight over the bear, watches some sort of bug crawl its way out of an empty eye socket. “Because why? He wanted to refine his palate?”

“Or maybe he just realized that he couldn’t live off animal meat.” Allison moves the flashlight to Stiles’ chest, illuminating his face, and he gives her a questioning look. “I did some more research; I think I know what it is.”

“And you were going to tell me when?” Stiles asks, and Allison looks back down at her boots, shakes off a wayward maggot.

“I told you I had some theories,” she says, her dimples widening. She opens her mouth to say something else, but suddenly there’s a growling sound in front of them, low-pitched and echoing off the walls. It’s exactly the same sound they had heard out in the woods on the first stakeout, before they were chased away, Stiles stumbling over his own feet.

“Stiles,” Allison says, but Stiles has already aimed his gun toward the sound, hoping that silver bullets will hurt whatever this thing is as much as it does werewolves. He starts stepping backwards, away from the carcass and back the way they had come, Allison fumbling with her crossbow, sliding one arrow into the chamber, moving it up and pointing it in the direction of the growling.

They can’t see anything, although Stiles has his flashlight bouncing wildly from space to space, trying to cover more than one area at all times, but they can hear it, can hear the clicking of his claws, can hear the soft shuffling of its feet. He catches some movement, something small, pointing it out to Allison, who also says she’s seen something, in the opposite direction, and they both keep walking backwards blindly, feeling their way around any obstructions.

Something flashes into the light and Stiles catches slick, dark skin before he fires off one shot in the same direction, watches the bullet fly through the dark. The growling gets louder, but Stiles doubts he hit it, having heard no impact. “Fuck,” he swears quietly, and Allison swings her bow from one side to the other.

“I don’t have a clear shot,” she says, and Stiles says, “Neither do I.”

Stiles hits the wall and looks behind him briefly, notices that the path is getting shorter again, closing in on itself, the walls growing closer together, the stalagmites and stalactites growing thicker. He sees Allison beside him hit the wall, too.

“Allison, go first,” he says, nodding to the path and the mouth of the cave beyond.

Allison shakes her head. “I’m a better shot and you know it.” She swings her bow again, listening for the growling. “I also have more arrows than you have bullets.”

Stiles sighs, but she’s right, looking at him and then back to the shadow again, saying, “You need to move, Stiles.” Stiles’ hand on the flashlight is still shaking, and Allison glares at him. “Now.”

“Okay,” he says, and then again, “Okay,” his breathing harsh between them, his muscles tightening for the inevitable race before him, and he squeezes off one more shot at what he thinks is a torso before making a run for it.

He doesn’t think, doesn’t allow himself to, just runs and runs and runs, making it outside and a few paces beyond the mouth, pausing to catch his breath against the side of a tree, his whole body vibrating. He sees Allison come out after him – it must be only a minute, but it feels like hours – and he wants to get down and kiss the ground, thank whoever is looking out for them, but she’s turning around and pointing an arrow and he’s running over to her and holding up his gun and they’re shooting, shooting, shooting, and they finally hear an impact, something like a howl, and Stiles would laugh if he wasn’t so scared, turning to Allison and grinning, her face set and smudged with dirt, but alive, so alive.

Nothing moves, nothing comes out after them, and Stiles wants to tell her that they did it, they got it, whatever it is, his whole body tingling with adrenaline, but there’s suddenly a loud crack as something hits the back of his head, and then he’s pitching forward, falling, watching as the ground comes up to meet him.

***

There’s a warm thumb stroking across his forehead, just above his eyebrow. He can’t see anything, can’t hear anything, but he feels that, a soft spot in the blinding pain that radiates throughout his skull. His eyes flutter open and there are colors and then shapes, blurry, out of focus, and he blinks a few times before he sees him clearly, the man in front of him with the uneasy smile, his hand encircling Stiles’ face.

“I’m sorry about this,” he whispers, and Stiles wants to say About what? but he feels his own hands behind him then, tied with rope or something just as rough, the soft skin of his wrists blistering and burning beneath it. He’s sitting on a dirty floor against a wooden beam, and he looks up and sees charred wood and brief patches of the red-fingered sky, the sun cresting over the hills, and he knows immediately where he is.

“You weren’t supposed to find him first,” the man says, and his voice is soothing, calm, but there’s an urgency underneath, and Stiles isn’t exactly sure what to make of him. He catalogues his face (angular, high cheekbones, curly hair), his clothes (sweater, white shirt, both worn), his touch (calloused fingers, smooth palms), his smell (same aftershave that Danny wears, but also the faintest whiff of dog fur), so maybe if they ever get out of here – maybe if they actually make it out of this alive – he can hunt down this man and kill him.

Stiles looks around him and finds Allison, hunched over another support beam, her hands behind her and her hair clouding her face. He can’t tell if she’s alive or dead and he wants to scream and his wants to run and he wants to do something categorically stupid like burn this fucking house down all over again, with this man and Derek fucking Hale inside, because he’s starting to get the picture now, he’s starting to realize what’s going on.

“Derek is only trying to catch him,” the man says, and Stiles opens his mouth to say fuck this, fuck you, when Derek walks through the creaking door, his boots heavy on the wood.

“Isaac,” he growls, and Isaac moves away from Stiles, almost sheepishly, moving over to Allison, his hands fumbling on her binds, checking and re-checking the knots.

“I fucking knew it,” Stiles says, and Derek looks sharply at him, raising one eyebrow. “I knew this had something to do with you.”

“Yeah, great detective work, Stiles,” Derek says. “Did you get that when I walked in the door?”

Isaac looks between them, his eyes moving back and forth, unsure of what to do next. His hands are still on Allison, who is slowly moving her head now, coming back to life, and Stiles’ heart soars, happy enough that he almost misses Derek setting a bag down on the floor, opening it up to pull out a shotgun, the double barrels long and black.

“You know we have people who will come looking for us, right?” Stiles asks, and he’s nervous, doing that thing where he doesn’t think before he speaks, his mouth opening and closing and talking and talking and talking. He sees Allison looking at him, groggily, and he sees that one of her eyes has a blue-ish bruise forming underneath it, and she’s slow, sluggish, her head bobbing up and down and then up again. “We have family and boyfriends and a whole lot of fucking friends, and they’ll start to worry when we don’t come back. Actually, you might remember my boyfriend, Danny,” and, boyfriend? Really? Stiles thinks, but it’s too late now, he’s already on a roll, “he’s a DEPUTY for the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department, and he was actually expecting me to call him this morning, probably right about now. And you know how paranoid us cops are, he’ll probably start searching for me soon.”

“Shut up, Stiles,” Derek growls. He’s loading the shotgun with shell after shell, and it’s not silver, so Stiles knows that it’s not for a werewolf.

“And Lydia!” Stiles says. “You remember Lydia? Pretty redhead with a mind like Einstein? She’s a bit psychic, so she’s probably already called the police, and they’re probably heading here right now. I’m sure she knew the second you knocked us out.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, snapping the barrels back, his voice lower than a growl, “Shut the fuck up.”

“Stiles,” Allison says, and he looks over to her, watches her eyes open and close until she can focus. She’s breathing hard, even though she’s not moving, her voice slow and croaking, and Stiles’ mind is racing with the dangers of a concussion, trying to remember what the signs were. “He’s not going to kill us.”

“What?” Stiles says, and then again, “What?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Derek says, and Stiles turns back to him. Isaac’s moved back to Derek’s side, pulling out a long knife from the bag at Derek’s feet and placing it on the crooked and imbalanced side table by the door. Derek grins, his face menacing. “You’re our bait.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then, his head pounding from the rush of blood through his veins, the adrenaline coursing through him, “Oh, no.” He’s shaking his head, even though it hurts, shaking it hard enough to strain something. “No. We are not going to wait for that thing to come back and kill us.”

“We’ll stop him before he hurts you,” Isaac says. And he’s smiling, going for reassuring, but falling completely short. “You’re only here because he won’t come after us.”

Derek sets the gun down and goes to the back of the house, checks a few of the broken, jagged windows. His boots are heavy on the floor, and Stiles can feel the weight of him shake the wood. He walks around and around, peering through the larger cracks.

“Because of your sunny personalities?” Stiles guesses, and catches Derek’s glare.

“Because they’re werewolves,” Allison says, and her words are slurred. Her head slumps, and Stiles wonders if she’s lost consciousness again.

Fuck, Stiles thinks. “Allison?” he calls, and then again, “Allison?”

There’s no answer.

“You need to get her out of here,” he says to Isaac, who seems like the more reasonable of the two. “I think she has a concussion, and if you bring that thing in here, she’s not going to stand a chance.”

Isaac looks at Stiles and then at Allison, who is sitting there, her body leaning away from her tied hands, and then back to Stiles, and he takes one step forward, but Derek is already coming back. “No,” Derek says, and Isaac stills. “She stays.”

Stiles makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “Derek,” he says, his hands curling into fists. “I know you’re mostly a law-abiding person, and I’m really sorry for thinking that you killed all those kids back then, but Allison is not going make it if you keep her here. Fuck, keep me as long as you want, but let her go. Please.”

Derek hesitates, looking at him, and Stiles knows that he’s calculating his odds with one less potential victim, with one less potential flight risk, and Stiles can see that he’s winning.

“Please,” he says again, and Derek sighs, before finally nodding.

“Take her back to town,” Derek tells Isaac, who swiftly pulls her free from the knots and lifts her over his shoulder. She’s unmoving, even as Isaac shifts her into a more comfortable position, and Stiles worries at that, worries at the way her wrists are already shining blue. He hopes that Isaac has enough compassion to bring her to the hospital, or at least to Scott, who has more medical training than most doctors.

As soon as Isaac leaves, Derek turns to Stiles. “He’ll be able to smell me from a mile away, so I’m going to have to give him an incentive to follow your trail back here,” he says. Stiles wants to ask, what, but Derek already has the knife in his hand, slicing one long clean line down Stiles’ cheek.

“Fuck!” Stiles yells, and Derek smiles tightly.

“That should do it.”

Stiles can feel the blood welling there, can feel the burn of the cut, and he squirms against the rope, completely uncomfortable with this plan. Derek places the knife back on the table and removes a roll of duct tape from the bag, un-sticking the jagged edge from the rest of the roll.

“So what do we do now?” Stiles asks, still squirming, the rope tickling the undersides of his wrist.

“We wait,” Derek says, tearing off a decent piece of tape and setting the roll down on the table next to the knife. He kneels down next to Stiles, looking him straight in the eye, and Stiles wants to ask him why he’s doing this, why he’s protecting this thing from Stiles and Allison, who could have goddamned killed it already if Derek and Isaac hadn’t interfered. Stiles wants to ask what this thing means to Derek, why he’s risking all their lives.

Derek looks at him for a moment, his eyes betraying nothing, before he places the tape over Stiles’ mouth. “In silence.”

If Stiles’ hand was free, he would have given Derek the finger.

***

It’s almost an hour later when they hear it, the low, growling sound that shuffles through the house. Derek stands up straight from where he was leaning against the broken table and checks one of the empty-paned windows, tries to catch the shifting dark mass. Stiles mumbles something against the tape and Derek shoots him a look, but Stiles keeps mouthing words, his voice loud and angry, until Derek comes over and rips it off, fast.

“Ow,” Stiles says, and Derek narrows his eyes. “Sorry,” he whispers, and then, “Let me go and I can help you.”

Derek shakes his head, still silent, and moves back to the window. They hear another low growl, hear some heavy, shambling steps, but can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from. Stiles squirms against the rope, trying to work his wrists free, and his skin is burning and he knows that he’s bleeding – knows that it will attract this thing, this creature – but he’s terrified and can’t stop.

The growling is getting louder, and Derek moves his head up sharply like he’s heard something in the distance, and slowly creaks open the door and slips outside, the door blowing closed and then open again with the wind, taunting Stiles with freedom. “Fuck,” Stiles says, and then again, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Nothing in his police training has prepared him for this – hell, nothing in his private detective training has prepared him for this, the slow wait for his own death, knowing that something much bigger – much stronger, much faster, much more blood-thirsty – than a human is outside, just ready to come in and tear open Stiles’ throat, eat his organs in one big bite. He’s struggling still, and he feels the pain in his wrists, feels the abrasions deep inside, but nothing is moving, nothing is breaking, and wherever Derek went, it wasn’t to confront the thing, because there’s still growling outside. Stiles thinks briefly that if this was what those kids heard before they were killed – this low, trembling sound – then they must have been terrified, must have been frantic with fear, and maybe that’s what does it for this thing, maybe that’s what attracts it, maybe that’s the only way he can eat them.

Maybe, Stiles thinks, that’s the only way to make the organs taste good.

There’s something creeping up the back porch, Stiles can hear the shuffling footsteps on the wood, and he starts pulling faster on the rope, completely panicking now. The knife is too far away to reach and Derek took the shotgun with him, so nothing – fucking nothing – will help him if he has to defend himself against this thing. His own gun, empty of bullets, lays discarded in the corner with his jacket, and Stiles searches the house for anything else, but finds nothing.

The footsteps are closer now, the growling louder, and Stiles takes a deep breath and closes his eyes and thinks, thinks, thinks. “Okay,” he says, more to himself than anything else. “Okay.” He moves so his feet are underneath him, so he can push up, and he’s squirmed enough that the rope is almost slack enough to slide it up higher on the beam, so he tries that for a few moments, pushes as hard as he can, until finally – finally – the rope works itself up and up and up, stuttering the height of the beam.

He stands up and he can hear the thing now, inside the house, can hear the groan of the floorboards. Stiles is sure that he and Allison had wounded it when they were hunting it before, is sure that the thing is walking around with some injury, because it never used to be this slow. He leans out as far as he can, stretching his arms, and pushes himself back, hard. The beam creaks.

He breathes a few more times, steeling himself, and then launches himself at the beam again and again and again. It takes six more tries, the beam groaning loudly, but he finally hears it break free from the ceiling, charred plaster raining down on his head, and he’s still for a moment before he follows the beam to the floor, his arms twisted painfully beneath him. He works his way out, his wrists glaring red when freed, and moves quickly over to the knife, holding it in front of him, brandishing it like a sword.

The creature is still growling, still shuffling somewhere in the house, and Stiles’ hand holding the knife is shaking, with fear and adrenaline and something indescribably strong. “Come on,” he says, and then louder, “Come on, you bastard.”

There’s an echoing sound, and maybe it’s trying to answer him, but Stiles thinks it’s probably angry now, angry that Stiles will put up more of a fight than all of its other victims. He sees something move in the darkness of the old house, something fast, and he turns toward it, but can’t make anything out. “Come on,” he says again, and then something’s launching itself at him, its claws burying itself in Stiles’ chest.

Stiles thinks he makes a sound like a scream, but he’s unsure, and he fights with it for a brief moment, close enough that he can see it’s almost close to being human, dark, slick skin, but gaunt features, emaciated. Stiles can see every bone, from the high cheekbones to the notched ribs, its chest almost caved in from what Stiles guesses is hunger. It slashes at Stiles’ arms and face, its claws catching skin, and Stiles lifts his knife and stabs it, more than once, again and again and again until it moves back, the dark blood thick and oozing.

Stiles crawls backward on his hands, his whole body aching, trying to distance himself. The thing haunts the shadows again, slipping into the back of the house, and Stiles knows that he won’t make another go with this thing, his own wounds burning and deep, his breathing shallow. He sees the thing move slightly and he steels himself for another fight, his hands shaking, his heart sluggishly pumping in his chest, but suddenly Derek is there, pushing the thing down, pumping shell after shell from the shotgun into its body, and the creature shrieks and then shudders and then, silently, collapses on the floor.

Stiles looks up to Derek, standing there with his shotgun in his hands, breathing heavily, and he smiles defiantly, sharply, says, “What took you so long?” before losing consciousness again.

***

Boyd is the first one to visit him in the hospital, which Stiles thinks is a tribute to how valued he is as a community member, and he says so, watching Boyd look at him, unblinking, his face made of stone.

He doesn’t ask what happened, mostly because he’s already filled out the police report, the one Boyd had grilled out of Derek after Derek had driven Stiles to the hospital. Boyd had almost arrested Derek, but Stiles had come to sometime later in the ER and, groggily, corroborated Derek’s story, and the police had surrounded the old Hale house and found the body – now completely human – of Derek’s uncle, Peter.

Although Stiles couldn’t explain the long, jagged claw marks on his chest, or the rope burns on his wrists, he had stated that Peter confessed to the killings before he tried to gut him open, something that Boyd didn’t even try to dispute, placing one hand on Stiles’ shoulder before the nurses wheeled him away.

Now, he stands by Stiles’ bed and twists his wedding ring around and around his finger, his uniform crisp and painful-looking. “I just wanted to say thanks,” he says, and he smiles tightly. “I know that you’re not the Sheriff anymore, Stiles, but you still care a lot about this town and the people in it, and I just wanted you to know that I appreciate that. That Beacon Hills appreciates it.”

“Wow,” Stiles says, and coughs, his chest and arms and back aching. “I think that’s the most words I’ve ever heard you speak.”

Boyd makes a face and walks out the door.

***

Later, Allison and Scott and Lydia stop by, Allison’s blue and purple eye shining under the phosphorescent lighting, and they surround his bed, Scott climbing up and shoving him onto one side so he can lay beside him, his hand sliding into Stiles’ hand. Lydia flanks his other side, brushing a stray lock of hair away from his face, not saying that she’s happy to see him, but still exuding it, her small smile lighting up her face.

Allison, standing at the foot of the hospital bed with her two hands on the sheets, explains what happened. She had known – or guessed, Stiles reminded her – all along that the creature was a wendigo, an almost werewolf-type creature that ate human flesh. She shows him the entry in one of her ancient books, the rendering there eerily similar to Peter, the dark, brittle skin, the long, sharp claws.

“Most wendigos start off as human,” she says, and Scott buries his cold nose in Stiles’ neck, Stiles holding the book in his lap, his eyes on the picture before him. “Before something happens – usually a winter storm or something – that forces them to cannibalize someone. In Peter’s case, it wasn’t forced. He chose it, and that’s how the first fire happened. Derek’s family was trying to stop him and he burned the whole house down around them.”

“Jesus,” Stiles says. Scott makes a soft noise against him and Lydia scrunches up her face, disgusted. She slumps in the chair beside Stiles’ bed, her hands folded in her lap.

“Did you know?” Lydia asks Allison. “About Peter?”

“No,” Allison says, shaking her head. “Derek might have, but my family didn’t. Actually, I think my family all thought Peter had died in the fire.”

“So, is that it?” Scott asks, raising his head from the crook of Stiles’ neck. “Peter is officially dead and there will be no more killing?”

Allison shrugs, and Stiles says, “Well, until the next big bad monster decides to invade Beacon Hills.”

Scott sighs. “Hopefully not too soon,” and they all agree, the machines around them beeping steadily.

***  
Danny’s the next one to visit him in the hospital. He brings flowers, which makes Stiles grin, and he lays a warm palm on Stiles’ hand and kisses him on the back of the neck and tells him that he doesn’t know what he was thinking, but if Stiles ever does it again, he will personally see to it that Stiles dies by Danny’s own hands.

Stiles laughs, even though it hurts, the stitches in his chest pulling tight. “I understand,” he says, and leans up to give Danny a proper kiss. “But I make no promises. Private eye-ing is a dangerous business, you know.”

Danny raises both his eyebrows. “Apparently,” he says, and kisses him again, his mouth and his tongue and his hands, cradling Stiles’ face between them gently, saying more than he ever could with words.


End file.
